


Take the Long Way Back Again

by anniebibananie



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Background Gendry/Arya - Freeform, Background Shireen/Rickon, F/M, Grief Sex, Modern Era, Rebuilding, Robb dies, Shared Trauma, Smut, background jon/Ygritte - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-24 14:00:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18572929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anniebibananie/pseuds/anniebibananie
Summary: Having sex with Theon at her brother's funeral wasn't the stupidest thing she had ever done, but it certainly wasn't the smartest. Honestly, the more surprising bit is what all followed."Theon understood what she felt, and he seemed to spark her awake when they were together like this. There was no world around them. There were no decisions to be made or grief to be dealt with. It was only their bodies moving together in harmony—giving and getting in equal measure. They were aching for mutual satisfaction."





	Take the Long Way Back Again

**Author's Note:**

> oops i killed robb again. if you want him alive go read my robbcella fic, i'm sORRY!!!! also like, a solid quarter of this is just them fucking i'M sOrRyy !!

Five days ago, Robb texted her: _I’ll be there in an hour._

Then he never made it. Then he was dead. It was the last text Robb sent her, and Sansa poured over it, trying to see if he could have possibly known. It was a car accident, though. You couldn’t possibly know that. You couldn’t be driving into the city for a visit after work and then the thought hit you with a sudden clarity— _yes, this over-exhausted driver of a semi truck is about to run a stop sign and hit me from the side so that I die on impact, my body too marred for an open casket._

No, he couldn’t have known. Sansa still looked at the text as if it would give her answers.

* * *

“That’s what you’re going to wear?” Arya asked, leaning in Sansa’s doorway.

If Arya wasn’t all that impressed with the outfit Sansa was wearing, then she really should know how absolutely desperate this whole situation was. She didn’t have much black, truth be told. It had been a part of her initiative to be more cheerful for the spring so she had went on a bender and bought pastels and patterns. There was a whole drawer of florals in her dresser.

Her therapist had told her dressing for success really was something to consider. _You’ll get stuck in your tragedy if you don’t attempt to step out of it._ There was no stepping out of it, though. There was only more, only ever more. It would come and keep coming. Now, here she stood in a truly atrocious pair of pants she only owned from the semester she interned at Robb’s law office and a shirt that barely fit.

“Let’s go steal something from mom’s closet,” Arya said. She reached out a hand, arm parallel to the floor, and Sansa thought about the feet between them and all the metaphorical feet there too. All the times Sansa had been cruel or the times Arya had called her a snobby bitch behind her back. “Come on, Sansa.”

Sansa grabbed her hand back, and the touch almost shook her body. It had been a long time since she had been touched. _I’m sorry I’m not a better sister,_ she wanted to yell, but her mouth was sealed shut.

* * *

They stood around the casket—Sansa in a dress of her dead mother’s, Bran in a shirt of their dead father, and Robb in an outfit of his own, just dead. She was the oldest now, she realized. Jon stood beside her, family and not family, but she was officially the big sibling. She was the one you were supposed to go to when you had a problem.

The thought struck her as so ridiculous she snorted, loud and unladylike. The official paused, eyebrows crashing together in distaste, and Sansa brought a hand up to cover her mouth. She should say sorry, but she wasn’t sure if she removed her hand anything would come out of her mouth but laughter. She waved her hand briefly, hoping it was enough, nodding to continue.

Jon laid a hand at her back. When she looked up, across the circle, she saw Theon’s eyes. She hadn’t seen him since before she left for school. He looked amused, raising a brow and tilting his head slightly. Then it seemed to hit him too that they were at a funeral. His face hardened.

He looked good, better than the last time she had seen him. There was something about him that was always a little grubby, a little messy, and at some point she had realized he was doing it on purpose. If he put up an image that he didn’t care, then no one could make fun of him to get to him. He’d tried today, though. His brown, curly hair had been combed so it wasn’t in a million different directions. He’d shaved his face clean. The black button up he wore was well-fitted, ironed even.

Sansa couldn’t seem to take her eyes off of him for some reason. The last time she had seen him, he was hanging out in the living room with Robb when she first left for school. That was before their parents had passed and responsibility came to hang around Robb more heavily. They were still kids then, just stupid kids. Theon and him had been laying across the couch, limbs intermingled as if neither cared to untangle themselves, and yelling at some sports game on the television.

Robb had jumped up to give her a proper hug, though he would be visiting her before too long. Theon and her… they’d always just coexisted. They were two people who cared deeply about the same person but didn’t care all that much about each other. They orbited the same planet but didn’t come much in contact.

“Yeah, see ya,” he had said, eyes barely leaving the screen. She had thrown him the middle finger, and he had turned to her and laughed. That was about as intimate as they got then.

Across from her, Theon broke the stare to look down at the casket. Sansa did the same.

* * *

“Thank you so much for coming, Alys,” Sansa said through a smile she couldn’t feel, reaching forward to hug her another time. “It would have meant a lot to him.”

“I still can’t believe it,” she said as she shook her head. “If you need anything, you know you can always call. I still live in town, so–”

“Thanks,” Sansa said, plastering another smile on her face so the interruption didn’t feel as rude as she was sure it came across. “I’m sorry, I need to go check to make sure we’re still good on food.”

Alys nodded sharply, and Sansa escaped into the kitchen. There was still another tray of finger sandwiches that had been delivered earlier. Days earlier she had spent too long staring at the food options, unable to decide what you were supposed to serve at a funeral for your brother.

“I like to eat,” Bran had said, motioning out with a hand for the menu she had picked up. “Let me choose.” She had been so grateful she felt herself tear up and hand it over with a shaky smile.

Sansa knew she could only hide away in the kitchen for a few more minutes before someone would come for or need her. She held onto the side of the sink, watching people out in the backyard. Rickon sat on the swing of their rickety old swing set, and Jon sat in the grass in front of them. The sight of Rickon in a suit he had only had to wear a year ago tightened Sansa’s throat until she was pretty sure she wasn’t going to be able to suck in another breath.

“Sansa?” There was a hand on her shoulder, and she twisted around. She hadn’t heard anyone approach, but Theon stood in front of her with a manufactured look of casual. “Are you alright?”

Her lips twisted up into a smile she didn’t even plan, just second nature at this point. “I was seeing if we had more food in case we needed it. Have you tried any of it? It’s supposed to be really good.”

“Have you?” he asked.

She stilled. “No,” she said, voice tight. “I, uh… haven’t gotten around to it yet. I’m sure people will start finding their way out soon, and then I’ll have time to actually eat. I haven’t seen you in a long while, though, are you still in town?”

Theon nodded, face too blank for her to be able to read what he was thinking. Maybe that was part of why Sansa had always found him indiscernible, sort of annoying. He was quick to throw a remark or sarcastic comment, but he also had one of the best poker faces. Sansa prided herself on being able to see what made people tick, had learned even better after all the shitty people she had to endure the last few years, but Theon she still couldn’t seem to crack when he didn’t want her to.

“Never left,” he said. “You’re almost done with school, right? At King’s Landing?”

“I’ll be coming back here now,” she said. “I should be able to finish up my degree with online school.”

“You’re coming back?” He brought up a hand and scratched at the side of his face. “I thought you only had a few months left.”

Sansa’s chest constricted. She took a deep breathe—in, out. _I’ll be there in an hour._ She wished she could turn around and Robb would just appear in the doorway, all one big mistake. No one came through the door, though, and Sansa still felt soldered together with craft glue and safety pins.

“He’s only fourteen, Theon,” she said, voice delicate and close to breaking. There was a part of her that was mad, too, though. Rickon was _fourteen,_ and he had suffered nearly a half of his family dying. How could she not offer him some sense of stability.

“I’m in town, Jon’s in town, we could just…” he trailed off, face crashing. He must have realized how ridiculous the whole sentiment was.

They were the two people who Robb was probably closest to before he went. Jon too, to be fair. When Sansa looked at Theon, though, she knew he understood the dull ache of nothing that crawled over her these days at the thought she would never see Robb again. She would never talk to him again.

“Do you want to go upstairs?” she asked. She had no idea where the words came from. It wasn’t even as if they had formed themselves in her mind before popping out of her mouth, almost more as if they had appeared in the air by their own volition.

He didn't seem surprised, somehow. “Okay,” he said.

“Okay.”

* * *

As soon as she had closed her bedroom door, he had pushed her up against it. His lips attacked her own, desperate and longing, and it was the first time she had felt anything in days. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him closer, needing the feel of his skin against her own. Without missing a movement, he grabbed under her thighs and hoisted her up against the wall.

She tightened her legs around his waist and pulled back from his lips, kissing spots on his neck. No, she needed more than that. She wanted to prove she was here, she was real. She sucked a mark into the spot where his neck met his collarbone as he walked them over to her bed. The two of them toppled onto the mattress, yearning and hungry. Theon ripped off his shirt. Sansa unzipped her dress.

Exposed without the dress, Theon had access to the pale flesh of her abdomen and breasts. He kissed his way down until he was leaving kisses over her thighs, growing closer to where she needed him. Her hands found themselves in those combed curls, making them wilder by the second.

“Theon,” she released in a breath. “I need you to fuck me.”

His lips curved into a smirk, and for a minute Sansa thought about him when they were younger. Always bragging about the hookups he had, and the lewd comments he would throw casually. Robb had rolled his eyes usually, Sansa would make a derisive comment back. Back then, besides for the fleeting thought that he was perhaps cute, she had never thought about doing any of the things he would mention with those other girls.

He ripped off her underwear, and she unbuttoned his pants to help him slip out of them. As he finished kicking them off, she reached over to her purse that was on the floor and grabbed a condom. There was something that seemed ridiculous about her slipping a condom onto Theon Greyjoy’s dick, but here she was.

She straddled his waist, hovering over him, and for a beat the two of them looked at each other and didn’t move. There was something about it—the two of them not moving, watching the other’s face while they took hurried breaths—that was so overwhelmingly arousing Sansa couldn’t take it for a beat longer. She took him in, and the feeling of all of him shouldn’t have been as satisfying as it was.

“ _Fuck,_ ” she moaned, trying to start off slow but really just needing more.

He growled, pulling her face close to place a biting kiss on her lips. Her hips moved quicker, and he held onto them as his fingers dug into her flesh. It was grounding. It was exactly what she needed.

There was a part of her that wanted to yell out. She wanted to scream with every thrust, every movement. This was _satisfying_ , and she hadn’t felt this awake in what felt like forever. Theon reached up and covered her mouth with a hand.

“You’re getting too loud, love,” he said, raising a brow.

Theon Greyjoy, the man she had partially hated but mostly tolerated, calling her love while she rode him was entirely bizarre and too attractive, frankly. She licked his hand, and he yanked it back. She smirked down at him, twisting forward and resting a hand on the wall to get the right angle so her movements were rubbing her clit just so.

The two of them, grunting and pushing and moving was too much. It didn’t take long for her to fall apart, and he followed half a minute later as she kept moving for him. Then, she fell onto his chest and the two of them breathed together.

She couldn’t tell if she wanted to laugh or cry. He rubbed a hand over her hair, kissed the crown of her head surprisingly soft for a man who hadn’t been particularly gentle a minute before, and pulled back.

“People will be missing you,” he said as he sat on the edge of the bed.

From here, face turned away from her, she could see scars lining his back she had never noticed before. Certainly there must have been some time they were at the beach, and she would have seen them? Her hand reached out, about to touch, but he was already up.

“I’ll zip you up,” he said as he held the dress out to her.

She nodded, took it from him, and walked back down the stairs as if she had never left.

* * *

On Monday, Sansa woke to see Rickon standing in the doorway. He was tall and gangly, on the cusp of filling out she assumed but who was to tell. Really, he didn’t look much like either of their parents. The hair was their mother’s, perhaps, and she could see the curve of their father’s nose, but he seemed so distant.

“I don’t want to go to school,” he said, voice even.

“You don’t have to yet,” she said, scooting over and throwing the blanket back.

He crawled into bed with her, the two of them curved toward each other like they were young children again spilling secrets at a sleepover, whispering so their parents wouldn’t hear. Except there weren’t secrets, just shared sadness and an inability to figure out how to go on next.

“I could make mom’s lasagna later?” she offered.

He nodded, cuddling in closer to her. She laid her head on top of his, wrapping an arm around him. Rickon acted out a lot, pushed them away in a way that was surely a coping mechanism, but right now he seemed so much younger than his age. She wanted to offer him everything he needed.

“I can help,” he said. He paused, eyes closed, breathing slowly and probably on the edge of sleep. “I’m sorry I made you come home.”

She held him tighter, feeling her throat clench up and the situation hit her like a crashing wave all over again. “You didn’t make me do anything,” she said. “None of this is on you.”

There was a beat of nothing, and then his breaths evened out again and he was asleep. Sansa felt a cry take her, but she kept her lips pursed shut. The tears rolled silently down her cheeks, until she fell asleep too.

* * *

Sansa stared at Robb’s text, the familiar routine of it, as the oven preheated.

“Do you have a friend who could make sure you don’t get too behind on school work?” Sansa called to Rickon who was in the living room. Bran was in the recliner on his laptop, typing away.

“Does it matter?” he called back, but then two channel flips later he spoke again. “I can text Shireen. She’s smart.”

Sansa went back to staring at the text before deciding she needed to do something else. Jon and Arya were on their way, though Arya really should be getting back to school, too. _You’re not her mother,_ Sansa reminded herself. Arya knew how to not flunk, she would be fine.

She brought up her thumb to her lips, biting at the cuticle. After a beat she reached to her neck and felt the spot where this morning there had still been the smallest mark of a bruise from where Theon had sucked. There wasn’t a text thread when she clicked on his name in her contacts; she was pretty sure she had never texted him before.

 _I’m making lasagna,_ she sent. She brought her thumb back up, gnawing on it some more. _This is Sansa, btw._

The phone sat to the right of the pot as the noodles swam in the boiling water. She organized the cheeses next to the pan, getting them ready for when the time came. Her phone vibrated against the granite countertop, and she watched it for a second. It was stupid. She had texted him after all, she shouldn’t be afraid to look. It might not even be him in the first place.

“Bran! Rickon!” she yelled over the noise of the television. “Who’s going to set the table and who’s going to help with the garlic bread?”

There was a loud crash that Sansa couldn’t see, but she was pretty sure it must have been Rickon falling onto the carpet. “I call garlic bread,” he replied, rushing into the kitchen.

Sansa picked her phone up. _Your mom’s recipe? I’m there. Want me to bring anything?_

“Set six,” Sansa said as Bran finally made his way into the kitchen. “Theon’s coming.”

“Theon?” Rickon asked, smiling wide. “Sweet.”

She didn’t really understand Rickon’s fascination with Theon, but she was happy to give him a smile. It felt like a small victory.

* * *

Arya took the plate from Sansa’s hands, careful not to let it slip through, and dried it with a towel. “Are you sure you don’t want me to stay here? I don’t have to go back with Jon.”

Sansa kept her eyes on the plates in front of her, scraping off the bits of cheese and leftover sauce. “Honestly, it’s fine. Bran and Rickon probably won’t go back to school tomorrow yet, so we’ll just be here. You can come over whenever.” She paused and leaned her hip against the counter, watching Arya dry the plate she had just handed her. “Are you going to head back to yours soon? How many classes are you allowed to miss?”

“I talked to all my professors, so they know what’s happening.” Arya released a puff of air, her growing out bangs floating off of her forehead before falling back down. “I was thinking about maybe not going back.”

“Arya,” Sansa said, her voice tight. “You have to.”

She shrugged. “I don’t really care about it, and you all need me here, I mean…”

Sansa closed her eyes and brought her pointer finger up to the crease she could feel forming between her brows. Today had been unbelievably long, and she hadn’t even done anything. Was this what it was going to feel like forever? She pushed down into the flesh and opened her eyes.

“Let’s just talk about it tomorrow after we’ve both slept, yeah?” Sansa asked.

Arya nodded, her bottom lip between her teeth. Sansa could tell she wanted to say something more but was holding herself back. If they were having this conversation under normal circumstances, they probably would have yelled it out already.

Jon appeared in the doorway, knocking on the doorframe. “Time to go, Arya. My girlfriend awaits.”

“Gross,” Arya said, but she was smiling. “Dinner was great, Sansa. See you tomorrow?”

Sansa nodded to Arya before giving a little wave and smile to Jon. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Once they had exited the room she fell back against the counter again, holding her forearm up to cover her eyes and groaning. Everything around her felt heavy, exhausting. She missed Robb so much so didn’t know how to even vocalize it. _Arya is being stupid,_ she normally would have told or texted him. _Explain it to me, less name calling maybe tho._ And she would have, and it would have helped.

Sansa loved Arya, and the two of them got along much better now than they ever had in their youth. She even loved Jon now, who she had been actively quite cruel to throughout childhood. She loved Rickon and Bran, obviously, but they were younger and… well, Robb had always been her person. He had been her brother, but he had also been the one she would text about anything. Jon and Arya got along so well because they were wild and misfits. Robb and Sansa understood that burden of being the older siblings, of trying to please people and live up to impossible standards.

She dropped her arms to her sides, and Theon was leaning in the doorway.

“I thought you snuck out,” she said.

He shrugged. “You need help finishing the dishes?”

“Sure,” she said, grabbing the towel and throwing it at him. By the time she had turned back around and had her hands in the water, he was by her side.

“Thanks for inviting me over,” he said as she passed him the first dish. “Your mom’s food was always the best.”

“You’re welcome whenever,” she said, halting whatever was going to come next out of her mouth. She almost had said _you’re part of the family_ , but that wasn’t exactly right. Her father had taken a soft spot to Theon because his family wasn’t great, so he had spent sometimes more hours here then he had his own home, but Sansa felt like there was something strange about saying that phrase to him. “I only know how to cook for a whole clan anyways.”

That was probably because most of her recipes were her mother’s, and she had always had to cook for all of them. The thought hurt.

She handed him the last plate and watched him as he dried it off, not caring that it was probably sort of rude. He didn’t seem off put by it, though. The clean shaven face was gone, and she could see stubble growing in on his jaw. The hair was more wild today, puffing up past his ears. He could use a haircut, probably.

He set the last dish down on the pile and turned toward her, raising a brow. She shrugged back, not all that sure what that meant.

“Walk me out?” he asked.

She nodded, following him all the way out the door and to his car without any words. When he turned to say goodbye, no words came. Then the both of them moved at the same time, colliding in the middle. Their lips clashed, almost too much teeth and tongue in their hurried moments.

Sansa’s back was pushed up against the cold metal of his beat up car, and she moaned into his mouth. She hadn’t known she was waiting for this, but now that they were breathing each other in again it felt like she was actually getting oxygen. All day she had been breathing, going through the motions, but she wasn’t sure she was actually getting air. Here, with Theon, she knew she was.

His left hand was holding the side of her face while the right went to unbuckle her jeans. As his hand slipped beneath her underwear, she found herself reaching out for him more. His hand slipped inside of her, and she rested her forehead against his shoulder, gripping his free upper arm to keep herself stable.

His middle finger pumped into her while his thumb was rubbing over her clit, and she found herself groaning pathetically into the fabric of his shirt. She could feel his breaths on her ear.

“Come on, love,” he said, that same term of endearment. The whisper was right by her ear, and it made the sensation more acute. “Come for me.”

There, in the middle of her driveway as she leaned up against his car in the darkness, Sansa came. Theon held his hand there for a minute longer as she collected herself, letting the aftershocks settle. Then he pulled his hand out and sucked his finger clear, which shot something warm and tight through her stomach again.

“Let me…” she began, reaching forward.

He stepped back, shaking his head. “Nah, for the lasagna,” he said.

“That’s prostitution, Theon.”

His face lit up, and he laughed loudly enough it echoed back from the garage. She couldn’t help but smile in return.

“Thanks for dinner. I’ll see you?” he asked, genuinely unsure despite the fact that this was the second time he had made her come in less than a week and both of their favorite person in the world, the same person, was dead. As if he thought she might just forget he existed instead of sharing the same trauma she held.

She nodded and opened his car door for him, which he seemed to find amusing. Then she turned back to the house, feeling as if she could still sense his eyes on her. As she got to the front door, she heard his engine disappear down the street.

* * *

Robb sat across from her in the dim light of morning, nursing a coffee cup at the kitchen table. The sliding back door was open a sliver, letting in morning air he seemed to be soaking up.

“You’re dead,” Sansa said as she settled across from him. Her hair was loose and long, longer than it was now. The last time it had gone down this long, almost all the way to her butt, she had been in her teens.

He brought a finger up to his head, tapping at the curve of his forehead as he smelled the coffee that was wafting up to his nose. “In your head,” he said, finally taking a long sip. “You fucked my best friend.”

“Are you mad?” she asked.

He turned toward her, looking so beautiful she thought she might cry. This was a dream, though, and she felt no matter how much her body ached there would never be tears to come. His face was smooth and clear—he looked younger, too. There was no sign of the dark circles or weary lines that had grown on his face since taking over for their parents.

“It’s a hell of a joke,” he said, head thrown back in laughter. “I never thought I’d see the day the two of you would get past all of your shit and somehow end up sleeping with one another.”

“You didn’t. You didn’t see it,” she said, and his laughter stopped cold. She knew he was there, and yet it wasn’t him. “You’re dead.”

He sighed, taking another sip of coffee. It was him again, but further, less whole. “I know.”

* * *

“You have to go back to school,” Sansa said as she shoved Rickon’s spirals and books into his backpack. He was sitting at the edge of his bed with dirty jeans and a loose old band t-shirt that Sansa was sure must have come from Jon’s own wardrobe.

“ _You’re_ not going back to school,” he said, tilting his head pointedly.

“Not true.” She paused, puffing a strand of hair out of her face and narrowing her eyes. “The second you get your annoying ass out of this house I have to start writing a paper all on curving the market within the expectations of merchandising apparel.”

“I don’t even know what that means,” he said dully.

“Must be ‘cause I’m smarter than you,” she said with a smirk and a shrug. “You might want to listen. Like, I don’t know, putting your shoes on so Bran can drive you both to school. You don’t see him throwing a fuss, do you?”

“You already sound like a mom,” he groaned as he finally grabbed up his Vans and slipped them onto his feet.

Her body froze, and she could feel the dry ache that started in the back of her eyeballs before the crying would come. She hadn’t cried since before the funeral, though, and she wasn’t about to now. A mom. Rickon didn’t really know what it felt to have one, did he? What a sorry excuse Sansa was instead of Catelyn.

She was supposed to be his responsible yet fanciful sister. She’d give him girl advice since Arya and the boys were shit at it. She would help him pick out outfits or cover for him if he was going to sneak out of the house on the weekends. She was the number he would call if he didn’t want to get in trouble with mom and dad but needed help.

Not anymore. Now she was the pseudo-mom that would never fill the gaping space left behind.

“Ready, kiddo?” Bran asked in the dry way that didn’t sound like a joke if you didn’t know him.

“Fuck off,” Rickon said, but there was no real anger behind it. He reached out his hand for the backpack, and Sansa handed it over.

“Should I say language?” she asked.

Bran shrugged. “You said ass before he said fuck.”

Sansa sighed. “You’re right. Okay, have a good day or whatever.”

“It’s gonna suck,” Rickon yelled as he ran down the stairs.

“Fine!” she called back, though she wasn’t sure he could even hear her anymore. “Then have a mediocre day, I don’t care.”

* * *

Arya sat on the counter, writing down the pizza order as Sansa sipped her beer bottle. It was a Wednesday, and Sansa really should not be drinking but days still felt like weeks and weeks like years. At least Arya had joined her in the substance abuse.

“Should I get a job?” Sansa asked, sighing and leaning against the counter.

Arya looked up. “You don’t really need to, do you?”

Sansa shrugged. “There’s a lot to account for, and I know dad and mom left money but…”

She thought about all the things Rickon still had to do in his life. Him and Bran both. There was university and the opportunities that had been allocated to both Sansa and Arya, that they deserved to feel, too. Sansa wanted for both of them to be given all the same things they had been given. It was the least they deserved.

“I should stay home,” Arya said with a certainty that stopped Sansa cold. “I’ll stay home. I mean, Jon already told me there’s work at the shop and… I don’t care about college, Sansa. I really don’t. I was only finishing it for Robb, but now that he’s not here, I mean...”

Sansa felt the sudden urge to yell and scream. Margaery was probably studying at the library right about now or wooing some girl at a bar, and she didn’t think twice about it. It wasn’t that she would rather be doing the same thing, but she did want life to be simpler for all of them. Arya should get to graduate. Bran should be applying for universities without having the entire process stunted by the death of a brother. Robb should be alive, goddamnit.

Maybe she was holding too strictly to the reminder that Robb could be alive. Maybe she was trying to keep life too firmly to what it had been instead of embracing what it was meant to be now. She didn’t want to give in to that.

“Do you really feel that?” Sansa asked. “You don’t care about a degree? You don’t care about graduating? You have the opportunity if you want.”

Arya shrugged. “Honestly?” she paused, waiting for her sister to acknowledge her to continue. “I just want to find some kind of fleeting happiness. What do we know of anything that lasts? Mom and dad are dead. Robb is _dead._ I just want to be able to pay the bills and keep moving forward. I like working on cars, and I like being in this shitty town all things considered. I know it isn’t what you want for me, but it’s what I want for me I think.”

She took a big swig of her beer, downing a good portion of it until setting the bottle down on the counter with a clack.

“Is that what would really make you happy?” Sansa asked. She threw her hair up into a ponytail, bothered by the way it settled on the back of her neck.

Arya shrugged, but Sansa could tell there was something in the way she was ignoring her. There must be a sense of truth there, hiding in the fear of approaching. Her and Arya hadn’t been the closest, but Sansa was aware enough to notice that. Now that she thought about it… there wasn’t much of them left. Sansa and her had to form these bonds, had to be closer than they had before. If they couldn’t hold tight together through all of this, what could they hold onto?

“I’ve always just wanted you to be happy,” she said. “If you want to stay and work, then obviously you have your room here or at Jon’s. If you want to finish school, you have the aid until you need it.”

“I don’t want you to be alone,” Arya said honestly. Sansa felt as if she could feel that truth staring right back at her.

“You can do that with either option.”

Arya smiled at her. It was the wolfish sort of smile that felt so distinctly Arya. Maybe they could be closer than they had ever been before. It wasn’t as if they had many alternatives left, and Sansa wanted that for them. She felt like, given the chance, they could truly count on one another.

“I want to be home,” Arya said. “Really, I do.”

So, Sansa nodded. She decided to support her, though she could hear her mother’s annoyed tone in her head and her father’s questioning brogue. “Okay,” she said, ignoring Robb’s eye roll. “That’s fine with me.”

* * *

Sansa couldn’t sleep.

 _What are you up to_ , she asked, though she wasn’t sure she was going to get a response. It wasn’t midnight yet, but it was still late. Rickon, Bran, and Arya, who had only officially moved back in, were all asleep, but she was shaking. The world seemed like too much. It had always seemed too much, but it was the first time she was truly realizing all of that.

_Just got back from work. You should come over._

It was another minute before he sent her a pin of his location, and Sansa left a note in the kitchen just in case any of her siblings woke up. There was something safe, though, about going to meet Theon in the dead of night. She was fairly sure she was going to get away with this without having to face any of the consequences, though _she_ would know and that was a consequence all its own.

When she arrived at his house—better looking than she expected, honestly—it wasn’t even him to answer the door. It was a girl probably almost ten years older than her? It had to be Theon’s sister, though Sansa had never properly met her. She was pretty in a sort of _I could care less_ way which Sansa found herself appreciating. She was in an oversized sweatshirt and leather pants, a combination that was quite odd, and her hair was pulled back in a single ponytail.

Her eyes roamed over Sansa slowly, critically, not cruelly. “You Sansa Stark?” she asked.

“Yara?” she replied. The woman nodded. “I guess it’s about time we met.”

Yara hummed in response but didn’t say more. Before she could find words, Theon was appearing behind her with a sigh of discomfort.

“Ignore her,” he said. “Come on.”

Sansa was happy to see him. Honestly, she hadn’t realized how happy she would be. It was like just seeing him, no matter how he looked, calmed a sort of weird part of herself she didn’t know how to name.

Jon may have been one of Robb’s best friends, but he had someone else still. He had a girlfriend. For Theon and her, they had never learned how to rely on another person. Robb _had_ been that person, and now that he was gone they were left shuffling for someone to fill the gap. Sansa didn’t want to fill that gap, though, because it was distinctly Robb-shaped. If she filled it, then he really was gone and there was no coming back from it.

Sansa didn’t want him to be gone. She didn’t want to forget.

He lead her down a hallway to his bedroom which was the last space on the right, and he shut the door behind her. They didn’t start making out instantly like they had the last times they were together. Theon watched her, maybe sensing she needed something different.

“This is your room,” she said. It was more put together than she would have imagined. It wasn’t clean exactly, but it wasn’t intentionally messy. There were framed posters on the wall, and he actually had a table in the corner that seemed to function as a desk. There was a stack of books by the corner of his bed, and his sheets were actually pulled up in a farce of the bed being made.

“It’s my room.” He crossed his arms in front of himself, pausing where he was and seeming to wait for what was to come next.

Sansa found herself wandering the space just trying to gauge a bit more. On the table on the far side, there were a couple picture frames with images of Robb and Theon in their youth that tugged at Sansa’s heart. There was even one from Robb’s 18th birthday, all of them at the beach, that made her laugh.

She turned toward his bed, eyeing the space of it, and couldn’t stop herself from crawling in after kicking off her shoes and throwing off her coat. It was bold and forward and a million things she knew she shouldn’t do. If she was smart she wouldn’t be here at all, though. What were they even doing? _What you need to survive,_ she thought, but there would come a time when she was doing more than that. Where the two of them would have to deal with the repercussions of their shoddily thought out actions.

Still, she burrowed herself in his sheets without asking. She yanked his comforter up over her head. The darkness surrounded her, and she waited for him to come join her. After a minute, he crawled in behind and wrapped an arm around her waist. Then, his cold nose rested against the back of her neck.

“What was your favorite thing about Robb?” Sansa asked.

Theon sighed deeply, as if it took a great weight, and moved from just his nose touching the back of her neck to the whole length of his face. Forehead to nose was resting into her, and she didn’t even seem to mind that much. If anything, she wanted more than he was offering. Sansa turned around in the bed and pushed closer to him. After a moment, she found herself resting her head against his chest.

“He was good,” Theon said after thinking it over. “It didn’t even seem to take him any effort. I always felt like I was stretching for it, didn't really know what I was reaching for. Robb just _knew._ It was like it was in him, and the best part was he made everyone better just by being by them.”

“I don’t know how he did it,” she said.

“You kinda do it, too,” he offered. “It’s not the same, exactly. I think I can feel it harder with you, you actually try, but you _make_ people want to be better.”

Sansa breathed deep. She could smell Theon—salt and boy. It was stupid that she couldn’t describe it better than that, but it was the best way it came to her. He was _boy_ —through and through. Her siblings were fast asleep at home, and she was cuddling with Theon in bed.

“I don’t want to have sex right now,” she said.

“That’s okay,” Theon replied. “We don’t have to.”

They sat in silence for a minute, and Sansa felt every in and out of his breath.

“What’s your favorite thing?” he asked. “What do you miss the most?”

Sansa closed her eyes, and she thought about that bizarre dream she had of him the other night. It seemed like she was catching him in her dreams more often, and she didn’t know what it meant. Was she losing her mind? Was he speaking from her beyond the grave? Most likely, she just couldn't seem to let him go, yet. It didn’t seem like she ever would be able to, though.

“I feel like I never had to explain myself to him,” she said. “He would just get it before I even talked it out.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “I’m kind of a fucking mess, but when I would say something… god, it was like Robb got every aspect of it without any more thought than that.”

“He was good.” Sansa reached out an arm and wrapped it around Theon’s waist. “The fucking best. The world feels dimmer now.”

“It is,” Theon declared. He sighed, and it pushed Sansa’s body away and then back in. “We’ll figure it out though, Sans.” _He has never called me that,_ she thought. “Or at the very least you will.”

There was something comforting about that. There was something that eased every achy muscle in her body.

* * *

She woke up in the middle of the night, the sun not peaking over the horizon yet. Honestly, she had meant to go home before ever falling asleep. They had talked about Robb, though, and the stupid little things that meant nothing about a day.

“ _What did you eat for lunch?” Theon asked._

 _“Just a salad,” she replied._ It was simple, it was nothing, it was _everything._

The comforter had pushed down more so that at least their heads were peaked out and the air was flowing more freely. Sansa couldn’t stop herself from reaching her hand out and trailing her pointer finger over his face. She started at this left eyebrow, following the line of it from above over to the other, doubling back so she could go down to the tip of his nose. Then she followed below his mouth, stopping to hit the strange dimple slightly off the middle of his chin.

“You’re beautiful,” she whispered, mostly because she was sure he couldn’t hear her. Also, because she thought it was sort of true.

He wasn’t perfect, far from it, but there was something about all the imperfections on him and in him that had spoken to her. They made him more beautiful, somehow. Not everyone could be actually perfect like Robb, and Sansa liked seeing the cracks and scars. It felt more like her that way.

She dipped forward and rubbed her nose against his cheek just because she thought she could. Then she left a kiss at the left corner of his mouth. Finally, he stirred a little with a sleepy moan.

“Don’t you want to sleep with me?” she asked blearily, kissing at his nose and eyes.

“Aren’t we already sleeping,” he said after a moment, voice so thick it was somehow more alluring.

“Mmhmm,” she moaned, and there must have been something about that sound that was appealing enough to wake him up because he grabbed onto her waist fiercely.

Then her hand was dipping under the elastic waistband of his boxers and fingering at his cock. It twitched awake, barely needing any warning at all. Without thinking twice about it, she wrapped her hand around it and stroked.

“That isn’t fair,” he said as he reached forward and placed a kiss at her jaw.

“Who said shit about fair.”

Before they knew it she was riding him, back and forth, back and forth, until he was coming and she was gasping. It was nearly like the first time they had done it, but this time it was a little less desperate and more bleary. It was smoother, more pulled from both of them and more unsure.

“I need to go home,” she said as she bent forward and kissed him on the lips properly. It was the softest kiss they had shared.

“Why?” he asked. His hair was wild and his eyes tired. When he looked at her, he ran a hand up and pushed the hair out of her face. In the bare light of the night and the sleep which coated his features still, he looked younger than he should be. “You can stay.”

“I don’t want all my siblings waking up and me not being there,” she said. She pulled on her coat as she stood up, but first she jumped back to the bed to plant another solid kiss on his lips. “Come over tomorrow for dinner.”

“You’re just going to prostitute me, aren’t you?” he asked.

She groaned. “Go to bed.” She kissed his forehead, something that felt weighty and intimate and too personal for the strange grief sex they currently found themselves sharing.

By the time she left the bedroom, he was already fast asleep.

* * *

“Arya said you were thinking about getting a job?” Jon asked as they stood on the back of the porch. Arya and Theon were chatting a couple feet away, sitting in the chairs and passing back and forth a cigarette.

Sansa turned around, leaning her back against the wood of the ledge. Through the back window, she could see Shireen and Rickon sitting together at the kitchen table. He was leaned back in his chair, eyeing the paper in front of him with something close to disdain. Then she reached forward and grabbed his pencil, pointing something out.

“I am,” she said with a sigh. The light breeze of the wind blew through her hair, and it smelled something floral. “I don’t know, though. I still need to finish my degree, but I’m worried about something happening.”

“We need a social media manager at the shop,” Jon said. He twisted around to watch them through the window too, which she appreciated so she didn’t feel quite as much like a creep. He reached up and tied his hair back. “You don’t have to work full time, and it would be flexible. Turns out for all his talk, Pip is pretty shit at social media aesthetic. Our Instagram looks like a third grader put it together.”

Sansa scoffed. “I wouldn’t insult a third grader like that.”

He laughed, and she smiled back at the sound. Sansa caught Arya and Theon looking at them from the corner of her eye, and when Sansa made eye contact with him she felt electrified. He had a sort of hunger in his eyes, something that pulled at her stomach.

“Just come in some time this week, and we can talk about what we should do. You’ve always been great at things looking pretty or whatever.”

“Very eloquent,” she said. Inside, Rickon caught them watching them and made his eyes wide, motioning for them to turn away. Interesting, she thought. Was Shireen more than a helpful tutor? She grabbed onto Jon and tugged him out of eyeshot. “Thank you.”

She fell onto the seat next to Theon while Jon continued to stand against the rail. Theon reached out and offered a cigarette to Jon who shook his head no.

“Is Rickon trying to put the moves on his math tutor?” Theon asked.

Sansa tilted her head as Arya tittered. “Honestly, it seems like he might be trying.”

“Is she one of Davos’s kids?” Arya asked. “I feel like Gendry has mentioned her before, but sometimes getting him to talk is like pulling teeth.”

“Yeah, she is,” Jon said. “And Gendry would be more willing to talk to you if you didn’t insult him every time you spoke, or like… he wasn’t already in love with you.”

Arya rolled her eyes. “He’s an idiot.”

Sansa tried to figure out if that meant Arya returned those feelings or didn’t, but her sister had always had a strange way of exhibiting emotion Sansa couldn’t understand. Specifically when it came from romantic relationships, which were few and far between.

“Oh my god,” Sansa said, realization striking. “Oh… my god.”

“What is happening?” Arya asked. “Is she finally having a mental breakdown?”

“I don’t know. Let’s watch and see,” Jon said.

Sansa looked up, feeling all eyes on her as her eyebrows crashed together. “Am I the one now who has to tell him not to have sex? And like keep the door open? Please tell me someone already talked to him about sex and protection because I don’t think I could make it through.”

All four of them stopped in silence as the wind brushed past again, and then they seemed to burst into laughter all at once. It took Sansa by surprise, pushing through her whole body in a way that felt joyful. This was beautiful, these were the moments she felt as if had been missing lately.

“You’ve got us to help you with all that,” Jon said with a shrug.

Sansa bit her lip, tried to keep her smile at bay. Then she let it out, realizing it was stupid to hide her happiness, especially from her family.

* * *

Yara was in the kitchen as Sansa made her way through the hallway, having entered after hearing the _come in_ yelled. She had a coffee pot in her hands, offering it to her and pointing to the mugs resting on the counter behind her.

Sansa grabbed the pot from her and filled up a cup, resting back against the counter and watching Theon’s sister. She didn’t know that much about her, frankly, only that she had come back to town after their father died and Theon and her were thick as thieves now. Their father had not been a good man, but the trauma had made them inseparable.

“Do you have sugar?” she asked, and Yara moved behind her to pull out a container. Sansa stepped beside her and scooped an obscene amount in.

“Holy shit,” Yara said. “How are you alive.”

“The coffee. And the sugar.” She looked over at the older woman and smiled, something like camaraderie. “It’s just caffeine running through my veins.”

Yara chuckled as she chugged the last of her cup and went to fill it with more. “Theon should be back soon. He went to the water early today to work on something.”

“No worries.” Sansa took a sip of her coffee and eyed the room. It was messy, a little disorganized, but it felt lived in. It felt like a proper home. “He didn’t know I was coming.”

She could feel Yara’s eyes on the side of her face, questioning and maybe worried? Sansa met them, not wanting to blow this off. She tilted her head in question, waiting for Yara to be direct the way Sansa knew she would be.

“He’s been through a lot of shit,” Yara said.

“I know,” Sansa replied, a bit of bite in her tone.

“So have you,” she said. There almost looked like there was respect there. She reached out an arm, and Sansa grabbed onto her forearm in return. It felt more like they were pirates on an open sea settling a deal than they were two girls who cared about the same person. “That’s why I know you won’t be stupid about it.”

They dropped arms. “I have to go to work,” Yara said. “Don’t be weird.”

Sansa chuckled, watched her leave, drank some more coffee.

* * *

“I found this,” Sansa said, handing it to him. “I thought you needed it, maybe. Or wanted it.”

It was a keychain, a stupid souvenir from the beach town an hour away their family used to go to during the summers sometimes. Jon and Theon had always been part of the festivities as if they were truly part of the clan, too. Sansa had never thought about it when she was younger, more annoyed that there were more people being stuffed in their car, but it probably meant a lot to those two boys to be accepted like that.

“Thanks,” Theon said, holding it in his palm as if it was something precious. Theon had bought it for Robb as a joke when they must have been somewhere around sixteen, but Robb had used it until the day he died. The stupid fake sea shells and mermaid decal coated in glitter that had mostly fallen off after all these years.

Sansa reached up, unable to help herself, and tugged at the hair that curled over his ears. It was getting more and more wild, and the length of it seemed to age him. “Your hair is getting long,” she said.

He rolled his eyes, but his lips curved up at the edges. “Can you give a haircut?”

Which is how they found themselves in the bathroom only ten minutes later, Theon sitting on the edge of bathtub while she held the clippers.

“Tell me this isn’t a bad idea,” he said. He was smirking, which somehow managed to make him look so rogue and boyish it almost hurt. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

“Something like that,” she said because fuck him. A laugh bubbled from her chest, and she stepped forward. “I have a vision.”

“Gods help me,” he mumbled as if he hadn’t been the person to suggest this in the first place.

This definitely wasn’t the proper way to cut his hair, stepping closer and having to nearly straddle his lap in his dim bathroom lighting. Her vision mostly involved just shortening the hair all around, maybe a little shorter on the sides than the top, but she liked when his hair had length and curl. She just wanted to be able to see his face without his hair falling into his eyes, so that when she looked over at him she saw _him._

As she kept cutting and the hair fell around them, Theon’s right hand moved to the side of her thigh. It was sort of steadying, so Sansa liked it. Partially, though, it was also sort of distracting. As she got closer to tidy up the back, his other hand mirrored the first. His left hand started moving up, trailing over her leg. He opened his palm flat, smoothing it up over her thigh, over her hip, almost touching her ass.

“I have a sharp object in my hands,” she reminded.

He hummed in response, seemingly not that worried. She was about done anyways, but him distracting her wasn’t helping anything. His right hand smoothed up and gripped tightly to her hip to continue steadying her. The left moved closer to the front, closer to the center, until he was resting the palm over her navel.

Her breath was definitely becoming quicker and unsteady. There was no way he didn’t know the effect he was having on her, and when she looked down he was looking up at her with a smirk. His face softened as they made eye contact, and his eyes were holding so much… She wasn’t sure exactly what it was, or maybe it was that she wasn’t sure she could really believe it. The look seemed to hold something of awe, something like respect, and it sort of felt like being worshipped. Her breathing quickened more.

Sansa dipped back, Theon still holding onto her, and got rid of the scissors. She straightened back up, shuffling as physically close as she could get now, and ran a hand through his hair. “Just have to check to make sure it’s even,” she said in a voice that was so hoarse she thought she should maybe be embarrassed.

She ran her hands through his hair and scratched her nails against his skull. He mewled, kind of like a cat getting attention, and when she stopped he opened his eyes back again and looked up through the hooded lids to eye her. Then he leaned forward, never breaking it, and kissed her over the front of her pants.

Her legs buckled a little despite there being two layers between his mouth and where she really wanted it. He pulled her onto his lap, a bit clunky at first because the ledge of the tub hit her knees, but then she brought them into the tub so they were as close as could be. Testing the waters, she grinded down once to feel him hardening beneath her.

Feeling dangerous, feeling like someone playing with fire, she brought her lips inches within his own. They didn’t kiss, yet. Theon kept one hand secure on her waist, the other ran over her neck and up to her jaw. She grinded down again, and he groaned loud and needy. Finally he broke their game of chicken and kissed her.

Their lips moved for more, tongues dipping into each other’s mouths, wet and wanting. Sansa kept her hands burrowed in his hair, scratching at his scalp, tugging at his hair. She wrapped her legs fully around his waist, feeling his hardness right against her core, and vibrated with desire.

Shakily, Theon wrapped an arm around her back and used the other to hoist himself up. They kept kissing, Sansa feeling some weird sense of inability to break. She wanted his lips on hers, thought she might need it more than air. He kept using a hand against the wall to walk them back to his bedroom.

The second her back was in contact with the mattress, he was grinding into her with a feral sound. She yanked at his shirt, and they parted briefly to get it out of the way with hers as well.

“I need…” Sansa said without any way to say any more. As she dropped her head to the mattress, Theon sucked a mark at her neck.

They both shifted out of their bottom layers, and Theon rubbed his knuckle over her. Sansa felt her back come off the bed, needing more pressure, needing more relief.

“Do I have to beg?” she asked as she held the condom out to him.

Theon’s eyes were dark, dark enough to halt Sansa’s breath again when she caught the look.

“No, Sans,” he said as he lifted onto a single hand, the other positioning himself over Sansa. After an impossibly long second, Sansa lifted her hips and Theon slid into her. “Fuck.”

“Theon,” she sighed, searching for that rhythm with him. They were sweaty and slick and desperate to get more of each other. His head dipped against her collarbone, and she could feel his soft breaths against her skin.

He thrusted, faster and harder, and she met him with her hips off of the mattress. She could feel the arousal growing in her stomach—the tightening, the climax just out of sight, and it struck her that this felt _right._ Fucking Theon was easy and so difficult in a way she had never  known.

“Love,” he warned, voice tight, hand gripping her hip as he balanced on his other.

“Come,” she said. “Theon, just come.”

Panting, weak and nearly undone, he came with a final thrust and fell into her body. She ran hands over his bare back, the small bumps of scars from long ago noticeable. She didn’t feel like she could break apart from him, didn’t know how to do it.

“You didn’t come,” he asked, though it didn’t sound much like a question at all. She shook her head no. His hand found her clit between them, and he started slow before building. He rubbed small circles, and as she arched toward his hand in need of more, he rubbed quick and faster.

“I– I–” She gasped as she felt herself fall apart beneath his hand. He kept the pressure there as she edged back, and then he slotted himself—thigh between her legs, arm across her chest, head in her neck—into her.

“You’re breathtaking,” he whispered.

The idea that Theon had been enthralled just to watch her come apart, that he had kept his eyes on her as if she was something to watch. It sent a strange mix of emotions through her. The first time she had slept with Theon, it had been nothing more than a desperate need to feel something. Then, it had been easy to keep coming back to him.

Theon understood what she felt, and he seemed to spark her awake when they were together like this. There was no world around them. There were no decisions to be made or grief to be dealt with. It was only their bodies moving together in harmony—giving and getting in equal measure. They were aching for mutual satisfaction.

They really were playing a dangerous game, one Sansa didn’t know the outcome of. That was a problem, though, and when the two of them laid together she tried to ignore problems all she could. She tilted her head toward his, connecting them, rolling until she could barely tell where his body ended and hers began. They held on in the delicate silence.

* * *

This time, they were sitting at the playset a walk from their house. Robb was singing loosely on his swing, lazily pumping his legs, and Sansa sat on the edge of the seesaw like she always had when they were younger. Even when no one else sat across from her, she would sit, wait, hope to go up and down.

There had been something about being up in the air at the top of the curve, knowing you were about to come down again, but also knowing you would go up and up. You would get this feeling all over for as long as you played at it.

“You’re not breathing,” Robb said. “You have to breathe.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Sansa hopped up on her feet, raising herself as much as she could by herself. Then she lowered it down and watched Robb swing back and forth.

“Do you love him?” he asked followed by a whoop as the chair got impossibly high in the air.

Sansa fell to the ground, brought her feet in front of her on the wooden plank of the seesaw. “I don’t know how to love,” she said, and it felt like one of the most truthful things she had ever admitted to her brother. It wasn’t even him, though. “What you love leaves.”

“Not always,” Robb said. “Just because others didn’t know how to love you doesn’t mean you don’t know how, you know. Don’t confuse you and them.”

She turned her head, that long red hair floating around her in a haze, and watched Robb fly from his swing. Before he hit the ground, Sansa was awake again.

* * *

Sansa bent down, searching under the couch for her keys though she knew there was no way they would be there. When she pulled back, Rickon was standing in the doorway.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I can’t find my keys, you know where they are?” she asked.

“I left a textbook in your car so I used them.” He tilted his head, tongue bitten between his teeth as he thought. “I left it on the kitchen counter.”

She sighed and popped up to her feet, messing up his hair as she passed by. “Put them in the dish by the door next time. Textbook, by the way? Shireen is rubbing off on you.”

Now it was Rickon’s turn to sigh, who was following her closely behind to continue the conversation. Sansa let him, recognizing the way he used to follow all of them around the house like a little duck just to get an ounce of attention. He was always waiting for you to turn around so he could hold his arms out straight, _hold me_ he would chant, _up up up!_

“She says I have potential. What fifteen year old says _potential._ ” He huffed, arms crossed against his chest. “She told me even though there’s only a month left before summer I could still get my grades up.”

Sansa picked up her keys and slipped her finger into the key loop. It rattled before she halted their shaking in her palm. “You do have potential,” she said with a smile. “You like her.”

It wasn’t a question. Sansa had learned some time ago that most of her siblings were sort of averse to feelings. Arya hated talking about them, Bran pretended they didn’t exist, Jon was overflowing with them but hid them all away as compact as he could manage. Robb would be honest with you if you just gave him a chance. So, at some point, Sansa had learned to just start stating the things she were pretty certain were true as facts. Then it became harder for her siblings to deny them.

He groaned, flinging his arms to his sides sort of like a child having a tantrum. Then he ran a hand through his wildly curly hair. Like a strike of lightning, it struck Sansa that Rickon would get older than Robb ever would. Sansa would age beyond her mother. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep that thought from getting to her.

“I like her,” he agreed. “She’s too smart for me.”

“You have _potential_ ,” she teased, then she reached out and wrapped her arm around his neck and pulled him into her side. “Ygritte is way too smart for Jon and somehow she got tricked into it. I’m sure we can find some way to make this work.”

“Boo.” He sighed then wrapped his arms around her waist. Sometimes, she was pretty sure he just needed someone to give him permission to be held the same way he used to when he would scream _up up up._ “Where are you guys going tonight?”

“Gonna go to the pub with Jon and Ygritte.” Still holding Rickon at her side, she shuffled them closer to the stairs. “I just need your brother to pick out a shirt so we can get going!” she yelled. “Arya is gonna stay in with you, is that okay?”

Rickon shrugged. “I was just going to play video games anyways.”

“Perfect, Arya would love to do that.”

“What would I love to do?” Arya asked as she appeared from the hallway in a sweatshirt so big it nearly hit her knees and hair in two dual plaits. Sansa couldn’t tell if she was even wearing pants.

“Rickon. Video games,” Sansa explained.

“Oh, hell yeah,” she said as she held out a hand and Rickon gave her a high five back. “Gendry might come over, and I bet he sucks so it’ll be an easy target.”

Finally, Rickon broke apart from Sansa. “I love winning,” Rickon said with a wide smile. “You don’t want to go to the pub, though?”

Arya swiped her arms down to her outfit and back up. “Does it _look_ like I have any desire to go to the pub?” She turned toward Sansa and held out a palm. “Mom, can we have money for pizza?”

Sansa rolled her eyes. “You’re the one with a full time job. Buy your brother some pizza with your own money.”

As Arya opened her mouth to retort with something else, Bran came crashing down the stairs. After all the time it took him to get ready, he had ended up in dark jeans and a denim button up. Sansa should have went up and helped him herself, but she gave him a smile. He looked nice while still looking like him.

“Be good, kids,” Bran said, and Sansa snorted. Arya flipped him off.

* * *

The pub was louder than it normally was, though Sansa should have expected that since it had been a while since she was there on a weekend. She could see Jon at the bar with Ygritte getting them drinks, and she kept watch of the high table they had been able to wrangle from a group of drunk girls who had left to take care of their even drunker friend.

“Hey,” came a voice behind her, the air brushing over the shell of her ear, and she turned to see Theon.

“Nice hair, it looks good,” she said. _He_ looked good tonight. He was just in jeans and a black t-shirt, but his face looked well-rested and his hair fresh. There was a sparkle in his eyes tonight, an energy that was sort of contagious.

He smiled and shook his head, laughing a little. “ _You_ look good.”

There was something about looking at Theon that was comforting, but she wanted _more._ She wanted to rest her forehead against his shoulder or feel his hand at her lower back. She wanted to be able to reach out and know he was there, knew she was _allowed_ to take it and ask it of him. Sure, she had been sleeping with Theon, but it wasn’t until this moment she had realized it wasn’t just sex that had comforted her.

Which was stupid, because they had done so much more than fuck. They talked about everything and nothing. They sat in silence when they needed it. He had offered her the other side of his bed whenever she needed to remember she wasn’t alone. Without being able to stop herself, she reached out a hand and circled his wrist. His eyes darted down to the gesture, and then he was interlacing their fingers instead.

She caught his eyes, and she didn't know if she could tell him how much she had grown to need him. This was so reckless—caring for him the way she had grown to. If she was smart, she would have stopped this long ago. She would have never _started_ this. Now, it had grown to the type of place you couldn’t recover from.

He gave her hand a squeeze and pulled back. When she turned, she saw Jon and Ygritte returning with beers in their hands.

“You made it,” Jon said with a nod, handing one over to Theon first.

Ygritte nodded a hello then dipped closer onto the table, resting her forearms there, to be heard. “Did we know Bran was in love with a bartender here?”

Sansa’s head shot up. “Who?” She was tall, but there was still a wall of people closer to the bar she couldn’t see past. “It would explain why he spent a half hour picking out a shirt. If I had known I could have _helped_ him.”

“You Starks,” Ygritte said with a shake of her head. “You all pretend you have no feelings while being ridiculous romantics at heart.”

Sansa took a big drink to stop herself from looking over at Theon.

Bran appeared breathing a little too heavily for someone who had just walked over from the bar and hit his hand against the table. “Guys. I got us a pool table, come on before the person I fought for it starts a counter attack.”

“You are… so _weird_ ,” Sansa said with undeniable fondness. “I can get the extra drinks, you guys go get it.”

Ygritte stayed behind as the boys rushed of. She grabbed the big pitcher of beer and the extra cup. Her hair was sort of wild and beautiful pulled back with tiny braids and clasped at the back of her head. It was still curling down her back, though, and Sansa remembered how she had used to be sort of intimidated by the other woman.

“He wants to fuck you,” Ygritte said.

“What?” Sansa asked, choking on her saliva at the change in words.

Ygritte rolled her eyes. “Theon. He keeps looking over at you. Honestly, you should probably try it. Seems like he’d be good at that sort of thing.”

“I–” She wasn’t sure how to finish that thought as she followed Ygritte through the crowd toward the pool table in the back.  

When they were still a few feet away and out of earshot, Ygritte turned and raised a curious brow. “Fuck,” Ygritte began as her lips spread into a devious smile, “you _didn’t_ , Red. Gods, I always knew you had it in you.”

“Sh,” Sansa hissed, breaking eye contact to make sure the boys weren’t paying attention. “Always had _what_ in me?”

“You’re a sister of red,” Ygritte said. “Kissed by fire. We have to act passionately, sometimes irrationally, but it makes life interesting. It’s how I ended up with Jon.”

“Can you not tell him yet?” Sansa asked as she watched Theon line up a shot with his pool cue. His body was long and strong. “There’s just a lot to figure out still.”

“I said sister, didn’t I?” Ygritte pointed out. “That means something to me.”

Sansa gave her a smile—a true smile, something forged between happiness and surprise. It turned out there were still good surprises after all.

* * *

Three drinks in, a lost game of pool later, and after a brief talk with Meera Reed the bartender to hype her brother up, she was feeling alright. The night was good. It was hard in some ways to see the way Ygritte and Jon curled around each other as the alcohol got to them, but at the same time she was so happy _they_ were happy.

Theon was up at the bar, and she noticed some girl come up to chat. Sansa wondered if she should interrupt. Maybe he liked it, though. Maybe he was tired of a girl who could only give him pieces of herself. Gods, when had she become such an emotional drunk. She turned to go to the bathroom when she noticed a figure in the crowd.

It looked… _no_ , she thought. It was stupid. Robb was dead, but maybe this was like one of those dreams of hers? Maybe it was an apparition or maybe she was actually sleeping. She set her drink down on the table nearby and slipped into the crowd.

There was a peak of a shoulder, a glimpse of his hair, and it felt like as she walked through the crowd she was coming closer and closer. What if her wishes had come true, and he was _here_ alive and well and ready to live again.

She bumped into a girl in her rush to not lose the sight of him, and the girl spilled vodka on her shoulder. “Sorry,” Sansa mumbled, ignoring the way the girl called her a bitch. The end of the room came, and Sansa watched the man go to a booth in the corner. When he turned, her heart stopped.

He looked nothing like Robb Stark. From behind, there were so many similarities it pulled at Sansa’s chest, but with his face turned toward her she could see he was someone else completely.

What had she thought was going to happen? He was going to be alive again? Her life would make more sense? No, those were things from fairy tales and legends. Those were the things of her dreams not reality.

She brought up a hand to her chest, unable to catch her breath. There were too many people pushing in from either side, and the _stench_ of this place. The liquor and the sweat. Noise was coming from everywhere. Rudely, forcefully, she pushed her way through the bar and toward the back bathrooms where she knew there was a backdoor.

When she pushed through it, she was met with almost summer air and an empty alley. The brick was rough when she pushed her back into it, and she slammed her body into it harder. Feel something, feel something, _feel something._ Stop being a woman made of ice, a weapon from all the cruelty and trauma she had endured.

There had been a time when Sansa thought there was only good in the world. Then Joffrey. Then father and mother died. Then _Ramsay._ Now, Robb. Now she felt more made of her tragedies than whoever she had been meant to be originally.

The sobs came without her feeling them rise up, just a shock to her whole system. Her body shook uncontrollably and water rushed from her eyes. She curled into herself, sliding down the wall until she felt somewhat like a ball. Maybe smaller it would be manageable, _she_ would be manageable.

The back door opened and slammed back shut, but Sansa couldn’t look up. The crying, the _sobbing_ was too much. It was as if every part of her body’s single function was this—feeling grief, pushing it out of her. She hadn’t cried, hadn’t let herself, because _this_ was what she had been terrified of the whole time. If she started, she didn’t think she would ever be able to stop.

“Sansa.” It was Theon, and through the haze of her tears she thought maybe she could see him crouch in front of her. “ _Baby_ ,” he said, and that broke her more. The sense of sadness in his own voice, the tone of desperation.

She dipped her head until her forehead rested on his chin, trying to block her face from him, and he rested his face into her hair. He reached out and tried to grasp her closer, but she felt breakable. If he held her she might fall apart more, and then what would be left of her? She needed to make sure all the rest of them could be okay, could keep going. They would never be normal again, but Sansa was naive enough to still hope for _happy._

“What happened?” Theon asked into her hair as he cupped her head against his chest.

“I– I can’t…” The words trailed off into more cries. She felt herself moan pathetically, her limbs uncontrollable underneath her. She was lifeless, tired, a shell of something more.

“Then don’t,” he said and hooked his arms underneath her own to pull her up to full height. “Let’s get you home.”

* * *

He got her into the passenger side of his car, and by the time he slid into the driver’s seat she was growing quieter. Then she reached out for his hand and held it to her chest, landed her face into his shoulder. The crying stopped, but she still couldn’t catch her breath.

They drove in silence, no music on the radio, the streets silent besides for a few other lone travelers. At one point, he dipped his head and kissed the top of her head.

“I didn’t say goodbye. They won’t know what happened to us,” Sansa said in a small voice, a _weak_ one. She hated every facet of it.

“Don’t worry about it,” he promised. “I texted them.”

They pulled up to Theon’s house, and he moved around the car to guide her out of her seat. Now that the crying had dulled to a stop, Sansa felt exhausted. Every movement of her body felt like working against the current, but Theon was beside her to help guide her through the door and down the hall to his bedroom.

She sat on the edge of his bed, lifeless, listless. He bent down in front of her and undid the clasp of her shoe, sliding both off and setting them next to the bed.

“Do you have a shirt?” she asked with a voice tiny enough she couldn’t be sure he heard it. The thought of staying in her dress, though, felt suffocating. Her body craved the freedom of existing without constraints.

He smoothed down her hair and kissed her forehead before turning away and rifling through his drawers. She reached behind her to unzip and take off her bra, and when he passed her back a shirt she slipped it quickly over her shoulders. She laid down after that and cuddled under his covers.

A minute later, he joined her. He laid on his back and held open his arm, and she scooted closer to him. Her arm over his stomach, her thigh over his waist, her face against his chest. After she settled, he wrapped his arm around her back and held on tight.

“He was coming to visit me,” she whispered. The words came out of her lightly, fragile, but she felt the implication weigh down the room.

“Because he was mad at me,” Theon replied. The words rumbled through his chest and into her limbs. “The day he died I visited him for lunch and we got in a fight. I fucked up, I thought I was… I’m not sure it matters now, the specifics. I fucked up, and he was mad at me, and he wanted to visit you because you were who he talked to when shit was wrong and he needed someone to talk to.”

For a moment, the room was silent. Then Sansa felt manic laughter rip out of her throat. “Oh my god,” she said, the words barely distinguishable between her laughs. “For weeks and weeks, you and I have just been sitting here thinking we both killed him.”

“Do you hate me?” he asked.

She pushed up lightly to make eye contact, the laughter dying away. She shook her head. “I’m too tired to waste time on hate, especially on you. I forgive you, though I don’t really know that you need it.”

He clenched his eyes shut, and she brought up a hand to try to smooth away the creases, to take away the tension. “I don’t want to be forgiven.”

“Is that why you’ve been fucking me?” she asked. His eyes opened. “Some sort of pity at doing this to me? Or some kind of torture for yourself?”

His body exhaled, and he brought up a hand to cup her cheek. His thumb feathered over her lips, rough and calloused against soft and plump. “No,” he said with a shake of his head. “You could never be a punishment for anything, and I sure as hell don’t pity you. I don’t even deserve a fraction of your time, and yet...”

She nodded. “And yet.” She rested back into him, holding him as close as she could manage. “I think we should sleep Theon.”

And they did.

* * *

Sansa spent most of the next day hiding away in Theon’s bed. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to go home, but she was afraid for what it would mean to be faced with her family and the reality of everyday life again. Under his sheets, sharing the screen of his shitty laptop to watch Netflix and eat leftovers from his fridge, the world seemed to stop outside the walls.

“I have to go to work.” He was throwing off his shirt and slipping into clean clothes. “You can stay if you want, but if you need a ride home…”

She flipped over and groaned into the pillow. Her body still sort of smelled like vodka and sweat. “I want to stay here forever,” she grumbled, feeling strangely petulant.

Slowly, he crawled on top of her and snuck his arms under her waist to pull her to him. “I’d never be able to leave,” he said with a kiss to her neck. “Do you know how tempting you are?”

“You’re crushing me,” she said, trying to twist her head around to glare at him. “What good am I _crushed_ into your mattress?”

He pushed himself up back to his feet, standing at the foot of the bed. He raised a brow. “I mean, I can think of several ways you’re good to me crushed into my mattress.”

“Ew,” she said through a smile.

He rolled his eyes. “You want to go to the water with me some time soon? I have something I want to show you.”

She nodded. “Okay. Now, take me home.”

* * *

Arya stood in front of the open fridge. She didn’t move as Sansa approached, hoping to get some food herself.

“Are you fucking Theon?” Arya asked.

Sansa froze. She opened her mouth with a lie already ready to bounce off of her tongue when she stopped herself. What had been all that time she thought about getting closer to Arya, bonding, if she was going to turn around and lie back to her? There was too much deceit in this world. There was too much loss for Sansa not to know how precious all her moments were.

“Yeah.”

Arya turned with narrowed eyes. “Weird.” Then she turned back around and grabbed some bread and cheese. “You want a toastie?”

“Wait, that's it?” Sansa asked. “No interrogation?”

Arya shrugged. “Do you want one?” She lit up the stove and dropped some butter in before turning toward her sister. “I can’t say I expected it, but I can see it. If it’s what you need… Having another person, it makes things easier.”

Her sister turned away, and Sansa almost swore she saw a blush on Arya’s cheeks. “I’m sorry. Is that a Gendry comment? Are we going to talk about boys?”

“We are _not_ talking about boys,” Arya said. “But I did fuck him last night.” She turned to give a scrunched up look on her face, sort of like _I don’t know what happened either._ Then she turned it casual with a shrug. “Oops?”

“Oh… my god. Tell me _everything_ ,” Sansa said with a gasp. “Like, how did that just _happen._ ”

“Well, I mean, it didn’t just _happen._ I asked him if he wanted to fuck and then he was all like,” she began as she made herself larger, trying to become Gendry with her next words, “ _Arya, I’m not just going to hit it and quit it_ as if _that_ was romantic. He is so dumb, why do I find that attractive.”

“God, we’re attracted to morons. Mom would be so disappointed,” Sansa said with a laugh.

Arya shook her head, and Sansa knew that the moment was important because of the fact that she was being this serious with her. There was nothing closed off about the gaze, and Sansa realized she probably should be able to be more open with her sister. She was hurting, too. Differently, perhaps, but it was still hurt.

“No,” she said. “Mom would be happy as long as we’re happy.”

Sansa smiled. “I think you’re right.”

Arya let out a long whistle as she turned back to the stove. “ _Dad,_ on the other hand. Wow, what a shit show that would have been.”

Sansa chuckled, a full-bodied action, and she moved forward to help her sister make a sandwich.

* * *

Rickon shifted in the passenger seat, picking at his hands. He sighed. “Would you stop giving me the silent treatment?”

“Sure,” Sansa said snappily, turning to give him a brief look before returning her eyes to the road. “Why exactly did you _beat up_ a kid? Huh? I thought you were doing good.”

“I am doing good. My grades are going up, I’ll pass the year.”

“You have two weeks left! Any more mess ups and you could fuck this all up, kid.”

“Don’t call me kid,” he said, shaking his hand. “Don’t be _patronizing._ ”

“Then tell me why!” She threw her hands up from the wheel, slowing the car to a stop at the red light. More than anything, she just wanted to understand. Being the pseudo-parent was fine when it was easy, but she didn’t like _this._ She didn’t know how Robb had dealt with it all last year, and she understood even less how her parents had done it with all of them.

 _They loved you_ , Sansa thought. She eyed Rickon before the car started moving again. She loved _him._ That was how she did it because she loved him and there was no choice.

“Please, just be honest with me,” she said. “I’m not mom, I’m not Robb, but you and I have to stick together. I want to be on your team.”

“I miss them,” Rickon said, and it wasn’t the joyful exuberance he usually spoke with. It was slow and sad. It was empty, but mostly it sounded like a kid who didn't know where everyone had gone. “Sometimes, it feels like everything is disappearing.”

“They didn’t want to leave us,” Sansa said, trying to remind herself with the words. “I miss them, too. You can talk to me about it whenever you want.”

“I feel like we’re leaving them behind,” he said with a shrug, his eyes out the side window and deflecting her looks. “We go days and don’t talk about them, purposefully ignore it all. Like, if we face it the past will bury us.”

 _It will_ , she thought about saying, but there was no way she would ever speak that into existence for Rickon. He was still only halfway through his teenage years, and there was so much more life ahead of him. Despite all the tragedies, she hoped he could come to know that life held good things too. If someone could be hopeful for it, open their arms to it, she had a feeling it came easier.

“None of us mean to do that,” she said. “It’s just hard. I wish it was easier when you’re older, but it isn't. It’s the big lie of life.”

“That’s rude,” Rickon said with a groan.

“I know,” Sansa said. “So, you punched them cause you missed them?”

He shrugged. “Well, _technically,_ I punched them because some asshole was making fun of Shireen’s scar.”

A swell of emotion flowed through Sansa’s chest. “You’re as stupid as all the rest of your brothers, casanova. You would make my life a lot easier if you didn’t keep taking pages out of Jon and Theon’s playbooks.”

“To be fair, it sort of seems like an Arya move, too.”

Sansa laughed. “Yeah, probably. Because I am kind and gracious, and it was done with good intentions, you are let off the hook for this one. Please, though, when you’re feeling things just _talk_ to me.”

Rickon shrugged, still staring out the window, but Sansa was fairly sure she knew what it meant.

* * *

Sansa laid herself down in the sand and spread out like a star. She could already feel it creeping in beneath her t-shirt and shoes, but she wanted to take in the warmth before walking over with Theon to the shed.

“It’s nice out,” he said, tipping his sunglasses down from the top of his head to cover his eyes. He lit up a cigarette and rested it between his lips as Sansa sat back up.

Theon held the cigarette between his fingers, dangling it there like it was nothing. He offered it to her briefly, and she shook her head. There was something at least a little soothing about the smell of it. It reminded her of the way it would hang from Robb’s hair or his coat, though he would deny ever having smoked anything when asked.

“I don’t really get cigarettes,” Sansa said dully, not judgmentally. She watched the water in front of them, the way it would come and hit against the shore almost angrily.

Theon hummed, taking a long drag and blowing it up into the air. It was hard for her not to want to watch him as he did it. There was something attractive about the long stretch of his neck, his adam’s apple peaking through, as he reached up something like a wolf howling to the moon.

“The first time my dad caught me smoking a cigarette,” Theon said, letting it dangle by his side now as he watched the waves. The wind was pushing his curls back, and Sansa could see the strong lines of his jaw, “he was furious.”

Sansa scrunched up her face. “What did he do?”

Theon shrugged at first, and Sansa could tell he was thinking about something deep and dark. It coated his features, made them feel heavy.

“He didn’t want me touching them, so he bought me a whole new pack, took me outside to the back porch, and he made me smoke every single one. It had to be at least an hour? Maybe two, honestly. I don’t know how long. Every time I finished one, he would pass the next one over to me and light it right up.

“I think about four in I asked if I could stop, I had gotten the point. I wouldn’t smoke anymore, I said. He told me to fuck off, and he lit a second one right in my mouth so there was two in there at once. By the time I was on that last cigarette, so disgusted with myself really, all I wanted to do was take that burning cigarette and push it right into his skin, but I didn’t. I savored every last fucking drop of that thing, did it watching him the whole time. I wasn’t going to give him a fucking ounce of regret.”

“You didn’t stop?” she asked, brow furrowed. She couldn’t imagine a father doing that, though Theon’s dad was nothing of a dad at all.

“No, ‘cause fuck him,” he said, bringing the cigarette back up to his mouth. “The truth was after that I didn’t want to smoke another cigarette ever again, but I wasn’t going to let him know that. Fuck his hypocrisy, fuck his unhealthy parenting, fuck him. Now I don’t know how to really be here without having it to keep me going. Sometimes I think I keep doing it because even though he’s dead and gone, he can still fuck right off.”

Sansa reached out a hand for the cigarette, popped it into her mouth, and took a baby drag. She didn’t let it go all the way into her lungs, mostly held it in her mouth then puffed it out. It still felt like it coated her mouth, and she dropped the cigarette into the sand beside her.

“Your family was a real saving grace for me,” Theon said to the waves. “I sometimes think about what I would have been without it.”

“You know you saved Robb, too?” she asked.

He turned to look at her, eyebrows furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“Robb never liked anyone half as much as he liked you. The day he brought you home, he told us all later he decided you were going to be his best friend and that was that.” Sansa laughed thinking about how bossy he had been then, convinced he made all the decisions of the world. “Think about how lonely the world is when you don’t have someone who understands you in it.”

They knew that feeling, had shared it since Robb was gone. Sansa turned to eye Theon, though, and she realized they had found it in one another at some point. Not that they vocalized that, really, but when the world was unmanageable she had begun to recognize Theon would get it. If he didn’t, he was willing to provide his presence as a comfort in its own.

“You were his best friend too,” he said.

Sansa sighed, long and low until the sound disappeared into nothing. She popped up onto her feet and stood in front of him, holding out her hands. “Let’s go see whatever it is you wanted to show me.”

* * *

“It’s a boat,” Sansa said. 

“It was for Robb.”

Sansa stepped closer and brought up a hand, running it over the dark wood. It was smooth, rich, simple but undeniably beautiful. She turned over her shoulder to look at Theon whose eyes were trained still on the boat. “You built this?”

He nodded, lips twisted minutely. “It was going to be a birthday present. I didn’t know how to stop even though he was gone. I’ve just kept working on it in my free time. It saved me a little bit, kinda like you.”

The shed itself was small, only enough space to hold a few boats at a time. Without the overhead lights on, they only had a few high windows to break light into the space. With the barest touches of sun, Theon looked half-hidden in the space. Sansa dropped her hands from the boat and stepped closer to him.

“Like me?” she asked. There was only a handful of feet between them, but Sansa couldn’t stand to break more of it. It was a solid buffer, and she liked being able to see his face and his body from this view. She wanted to see all of him as he answered.

“I would have been lost,” he said with a sharp nod, but he wasn’t able to meet her eyes. “I felt sort of dead, honestly. I don’t think I breathed again until you let me kiss you.”

It was strange because Sansa thought she was fairly good at knowing what was happening behind people’s demeanors and inside their heads, but there was always some distance between what she thought and what was actually going on. To know now, though, that Theon had felt exactly the same way the first time they had touched was wild. She had just needed someone to reach out and help hold her together, and he had needed the same.

“You did that for me, too,” she said with a whisper. She had realized a while ago that the two of them would never recover from this, but she was pretty sure now she didn’t want to. Her eyes went back to the boat. “Maybe we could go out in it for his birthday. I think everyone else would really like it.”

“Yeah, that would be nice.” Theon sighed, and Sansa turned back to look at him. “You know, my sister thinks you might break me.”

She tilted her head to the side, not sure if she should be offended. Yara had said that directly to her face in a way, though, so it wasn’t exactly surprising. “I know,” Sansa said.

Theon took a step forward but didn’t break the space completely. “She also thinks I might break you.”

Sansa’s lips curved up. “It’s a good thing we’re not quite as breakable as we used to be.”

“You’re the strongest person I know,” he said without a shred of uncertainty.

There was water building at the corner of her eyes, and she reached up to wipe away a single tear. She wanted to say something to let him know how much that meant to her, or to let him know how much she cared about him back. She respected him, she was sometimes amazed by him, she was definitely thankful for him. She honestly thought she might love him, but she hated that word still.

Instead of speaking, she took three steps toward him and hugged him tight. It took a moment, but then he hugged her back and she could have sworn she felt a tear leak onto her shoulder.

* * *

Later, they landed into her bed softly. It was a slow process, the two of them moving. Sansa lazily kissed over his chest before going south, exploring all the edges of his soft flesh.

“You’re beautiful,” he said, and she crawled back up him to kiss him on his lips.

His hands were playing with her hair before running down her back, over her hips. He flipped her onto the mattress and pulled off her pants and underwear. Then he held himself over her and unbuttoned her button by button, stopping to give a solid kiss as he undid each one. When he got to her nipples, he stopped to give both attention. He sucked, licked, breathed over them until Sansa felt wet and ready just from that.

“Theon,” she said, though she wasn’t sure _what_ she was trying to say with his name. It was grateful and wanting and something else. She felt like she would never get sick of this.

This was different than the other times they had slept together. There was no rush to move anything quickly. If anything, it was the exact opposite of that. They took their time moving over every part of each other, worshipping until they were praying at the other’s altar and begging to finally, _finally_ release.

“I,” he began before moaning out long and deep, _“love_.”

 _I love you_ , she thought. She wondered what it would be like if he had actually said it. She pretended for a moment he had.

* * *

They were at the edge of the ocean this time, and Sansa was a few steps further back. Robb, despite being in jeans and tennis shoes, was up to his mid-calves in the docile waves.

“He loves you,” Robb said.

Sansa shook her head. “You can’t know that.”

“But you can,” he said. The sun twinkled off of his hair, and he turned his face toward the warmth.

That was terrifying, she realized, maybe even more terrifying than loving someone. _Knowing_ someone else loved you, and you had the ability to break them completely. Was that all that loving someone was? A sort of mutually assured destruction, an ability to know you both held the other’s heart in the palm of your hand?

No, it had to be more than that. Sansa thought it might be knowing that you _could_ and knowing, despite that, all you wanted to do was everything in your power to avoid that. That you would sacrifice yourself in the name of making sure that other person didn’t hurt. She wasn’t sure it mattered, though, because what really mattered was that they _felt_ it. They loved, despite having lost.

“What are you so scared of?” he asked, raising a brow. He was up to his waist now. The water around him seemed calmer.

“Everything,” she said, but her voice didn’t crack. It was just simple, paralyzing truth.

“That’s life.” He shrugged, stepping further into the waves. It was harder to hear him now from the shore, and she stumbled forward slightly afraid he would move so far he would disappear from view.

“Don’t go,” she called.

This time when he looked at her his smile was wide and full. “I’m always with you, Sansa. You know that. I’m just going for a swim.”

She watched him walk in further. She watched him disappear beneath the waves and never come back up, but she wasn’t scared. She had the eeriest feeling that he was just underneath the water, swimming and moving, ready to come up at any moment.

* * *

She woke up to find Theon still beside her. His face was peaceful in sleep, and she curled closer.

 _He loves you,_ Robb said.

“I think you do,” she whispered into the silence. His breaths were low and slow. “I think I do.”

For now, though, it felt like a nice secret for her. Though, maybe he already knew. Truthfully, she didn’t much mind that. She let herself fall back asleep.

* * *

Rickon sat across the kitchen table from her, only half awake as he shoveled pancakes into his mouth.

“You’re free,” Sansa said with a happy shake of her hands. “What are we going to do with your summer?”

He shrugged. “Is Theon your boyfriend?” he asked.

Arya appeared in the doorway and snorted at the question. She sat down next to Rickon and stole a pancake off his plate despite there being a full pile in the middle of the table. “Yeah, Sansa, is Theon your boyfriend?”

“Don’t encourage that.” Sansa shook her head, narrowing her eyes at Rickon. “Is Shireen _your_ girlfriend?”

He smiled goofily at her. “Yeah, duh. I’m an idiot, but I’m smart enough to lock that down. She’s going to like take over the world, and I’m gonna be her arm candy.”

Sansa’s brow furrowed. “Wait, is Gendry _your_ boyfriend?” she asked as she turned to Arya.

Her mouth was full of pancakes, but it didn’t deter her from answering. “I mean, I guess? I didn’t ask if we were going steady or anything, but yeah probably. We’re not seeing other people.”

“Oh my god,” Sansa said with a gasp, looking between the two of them. “ _I’m_ the last one of us to figure this out. When did everyone else here get better at feelings than me?”

“I haven’t,” Bran said as he entered and went over to the coffee pot. “I mean, I’m still trying to convince Meera to marry me. I’ll get there. Like, 80% sure of it.”

Arya gave her a sassy sort of smile, shaking her head and pointing her pancake-filled fork in her direction. “Might be time to figure some shit out.”

If Arya was the one telling her, Sansa thought she might be right.

* * *

When Yara opened the door, there must have been something in Sansa’s eyes that spoke business. Without words, she let her into the house.

Sansa made her way to Theon’s room, happy to find the door open and him sitting at his table in the corner.

“I need to talk to you,” she said.

He turned, and when he saw her his face grew confused. Standing up, he nodded. “What’s this about?”

“Can we go outside?” she asked. “I want some fresh air.”

Theon followed Sansa back out the back so they could stand on the sad excuse for a back patio they had. The sun had already set, and the sky was turning more toward a silky, navy sky than blue. The wind whispered past, barely there. It was hot despite the hour, and in the distance she could hear the bugs making noise.

“Do you like me because I’m the only person who understands about Robb or do you like me because of who I am?” she asked.

Theon smiled, not smirked, and it was toothy and wide. “I _love_ you because of who you are.”

Her breath halted, and she wanted to break the space and never let it pull them apart again. She wanted to kiss his lips and feel him beside her. “I can't compete with a ghost,” she said. “It needs to be more than that.”

He nodded again, taking a step closer. “It is.”

“Good.” She swallowed, fingers twitching nervously at her side. “I love you, too.”

“Thank fucking gods,” he said with a rush of breath, and then he was bridging the final gap and tugging her face toward his.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and tilted into him, kissing him back in a way she had a million times before though it felt new, different, too. Maybe it was because they had finally put a name to this, and Sansa knew with certainty it wasn’t going anywhere. They were in this—feeling it, living it—and the whole idea of it filled her with a rush of life.

“Thank you,” she said as she pulled back, their foreheads still connected. It sounded kind of stupid when she thought about it, but he must have known what she meant because he gave her a short kiss on her lips in response.

“Thank _you_.”

* * *

Sansa shut the door of her car and waited at the base of the hood for Theon, who grabbed onto her hand and interlaced their fingers. He looked carefree as they made their way to the beach, the sounds of all their friends and family already carrying to them on the wind.

“I know we literally had sex at my brother’s funeral,” Sansa said, “but somehow this still feels more intimate and strange.”

“Holding my hand?” he asked. “Rude.”

She rolled her eyes. “You know what I’m saying. I didn’t know if we’d get this.”

He tucked her under his arm and kissed the crown of her head, smiling down at her. “I know.” Their group was close now, noticing their appearance and waving them over. “This is my _girlfriend_ ,” Theon called. “I don’t know if you’ve met her before. Sansa Stark?”

“Shut the fuck up, Theon!” Arya called with a fake cheery smile, a middle finger already up. “She was my sister before you started boning her.”

Sansa laughed, pushing him away.

Jon looked up from the grill and raised a brow. “Arya, there are _children_ here.”

Through a mouthful of chips, Rickon nodded. “Yeah, like Bran.”

Looking around, Sansa felt so much love for all of the people around her it was unimaginable. Feeling reckless, feeling lucky, she turned toward Theon and gave him a sound kiss. When she heard someone boo her (Arya, probably) and a catcall (definitely Ygritte), she flashed a middle finger of her own.

“Hey,” she whispered when she pulled back. “Remember I love you,” she said, then her lips spread wider into something mischievous, “but also you’re an idiot.”

His eyes widened. “You did _not_.” As he dove forward to try to grab her around the waist, she was already running away and squealing as she barely missed the gesture. The sand was hot on her now bare feet, and it was hard to zig away, but she managed it for a minute before he captured her and took her to the waves to throw her in.

She sputtered as she rose again, her red hair glued to the sides of her face with moisture, but Theon was there, too. He fell onto this back in the waves, floating with the current. Sansa leaned back and did the same, closing her eyes to the sun in the sky above. In the water, she felt his hand reach for hers and for a while that was where they stayed. Connected, floating, enjoying the waves as they enjoyed a moment.

 _Happy Birthday, Robb,_ she thought, and when she looked over at Theon she was sure he was thinking it, too.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr: [anniebibananie](http://anniebibananie.tumblr.com/)


End file.
